


Beasts of Iron and Smoke

by cadmean



Category: The Half-Made World - Felix Gilman
Genre: Adventure, Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon, in a rare turn of events Marmion is not as much of an asshole as it could be, weird west
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 17:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10598736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadmean/pseuds/cadmean
Summary: On the run from the Line, Creedmoor decides to lay low in the small town of Ordinary. Things go downhill from there.





	

_I: Ordinary_

The small frontier town of Ordinary was as backwater a place as could be, and Creedmoor would not have willingly gone there if someone had paid him to. That he found himself sitting at the only bar the place had regardless, downing shot after shot of a piss-poor excuse for alcohol, was, therefore, not as much his own decision as it was his profound desire to not have his corpse attracting flocks of scavenger birds just yet.

And with a good deal more Linesmen after him than he cared to count

\--Ninety-three, Creedmoor. Two ornithopters. Poor chances, even for us.

he’d done the sensible thing and fled to a place the Engines’ corruption hadn’t yet touched. Ordinary, as it so happened, was both dingy and just far away enough from the Lines’ current  frontier that it warranted only a couple of Line scouts, who tried their best to look inconspicuous in their drab grey uniforms and subsequently drew looks from everyone who passed them on the way into town.

Creedmoor had briefly played with the idea of shooting the both of them, and though his master had urged him on he’d eventually decided against it. It would draw too much attention – to him, to Ordinary. He didn’t fancy fleeing in the dead of night again so soon. When a merchant wagon had ambled up, drawn by two horses who looked more skeletal than Creedmoor thought to be a sustainable condition, he’d hitched a ride and passed by the Linesmen unnoticed.

Ordinary lived up to its name. The town consisted entirely of several run-down buildings containing even dingier apartments, as well as a ramshackle mayor's house that Creedmoor was fairly certain dated back to the days of the Red Republic and was only held together by dirt and the fervent curses of its inhabitants. There was also a bar -- of course there was -- and it was there that Creedmoor found himself most often, sipping on a drink and smiling at the girls with his eyes on the door and his hand close to his gun.

\--How long do you think we have to stay here? The Linesmen will have to give up eventually, I recon.

Marmion’s voice cut into his head with the sensation of heavy, black smoke and the sharp tang of freshly-spilled blood in response.

\--Don’t underestimate our enemies, Creedmoor. We are powerful and have imbued you with part of our strength, but you lack the devotion and simple-minded commitment those following the Engines have.

Creedmoor laughed.

\--You’d honestly prefer it if I followed your orders without question, without thinking? Marmion, don’t kid yourself. That’s not the Gun’s style, else you wouldn’t be so at odds with the Line. Chaos is your nature, friend, so don’t complain when I also hold true to that.

\--We like our servants to be independent, Creedmoor. Now shut up and focus. The men at the far table have been glaring at you; one of them has a knife, another an ill-concealed firearm. Be efficient, we don’t want any more attention drawn to us.

Slowly Creedmoor glanced up – it was all the warning he got as a fist headed straight for his head. He ducked just in time and avoided the hit by a hair’s width. Yet his movement was off, hampered by the alcohol.

\--A little help would be nice here, what with the ample warning you deigned to give me.

Marmion said nothing, but it reached in and negated the effects of the alcohol, and as Creedmoor’s senses sharpened he became aware of the knife that was now dangerously close to his kidney. He swatted at the hand holding it almost playfully, like he would at an annoying fly, then kicked the man the hand belonged to in the gut with just enough force to make his would-be assailant double over in pain. The man stumbled back, still clutching at his stomach and heaving – he hit a nearby table and went down in a crashing cascade of glass, and Creedmoor turned his attention elsewhere.

The second man, meanwhile, had gotten a grip on Creedmoor’s left arm, twisting it until Creedmoor felt the bones in it start to give, to crack; his master healed it just as quickly and Creedmoor shook the hands off of him. With a sloppy but well-placed kick he hit the man in the shins – to the other man’s credit he flinched only for a moment, drink most likely having made him somewhat insensitive to the pain. Too late and not nearly enough, though, and he had the most ridiculous look on his face when Creedmoor punched him square on the nose. It started spewing blood immediately while the man himself went down, moaning and clutching at the broken appendage.

“Anyone else want to give it a go, or can I get back to my beer now?” When he was met with silence, Creedmoor sat back down and put his glass upright again with an annoyed grunt. Almost empty, and he’d paid more money for it than the cheap brew warranted in the first place.

\--Fucking idiots. Look at them. A proper hit each and they’re down already – what do they teach the kids these days?

\--You would not have fared as well against them without our strength, Creedmoor. Be thankful we like our Agents healthy.

\--Of course.

. . . all of which took place in an instant, so that he was able to face the woman settling into the seat across from him with relative unfazedness. Noting the low cut of her dress and the subtle curves of her body, he was instead surprised to see in her face the lines of hard years and long, dry winters. Her eyes, however, were startlingly clear and filled to the brim with all-too-evident disdain.

It forced a smile onto Creedmoor’s lips, unbidden and true, and he winked at her when he began, “Miss! What an unexpected flower to find amid this barren little town. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She scowled even more at that. “I’m going to be very clear here,” she said, “as I’ve found that works the best both with you and the Linesmen.”

Creedmoor raised an eyebrow at her, even as Marmion began to clamor for her death. “I’m not quite sure what you mean with ‘you’ there, ma’am, but you have my ear.”

“You know full well what I mean, Mr Connolly.” It was the name Creedmoor had given when he’d rented a room at the shabby boarding house, and it did not surprise him that this woman knew it. News of strangers travelled fast in a little town like this, especially if not much else was going on.

“I don’t, actually. I also can’t help but notice that you know who I am, but I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of meeting yet – John Connolly, at your service. And you are?”

“Eleanore Balmoral. _Mayor_ Balmoral, Mr Connolly, and I care deeply for my town, small as it may be.” She gave him a hard look, and Creedmoor, despite everything else, found the look to suit her. “We have managed to avoid the attention of Gun and Line so far, and Mr Connolly, I’d like to keep it that way.”

“An ambitious endeavor, to be sure.”

“ _Listen_ ,” she snapped, leaning forward to grasp at his hand and pull it down flat on the table – he let her, and made an effort to smile as serenely at her as he possibly could. Her fingers were rough and calloused. “I know what you are. I know your name isn’t Connolly, I know you’re not just here because you happen to enjoy backwater towns. On the run from the Line, are you? Something went wrong and you decided to lay low here in Ordinary?”

Here she sneered, and for the first time that day Creedmoor perked up to properly pay attention. More perceptive than your usual mayor out near the edge of the world, was Eleanore Balmoral, and a good deal more frank about her distaste for Gun and Line, too.

\--She will be trouble, Creedmoor. Kill her now and be done with it.

\--Let’s see what she wants from us first, my trigger-happy friend.

“Well, Mr Connolly, let me inform you that Ordinary is no longer a quiet, quaint little town where the most exciting thing to happen is that one of the horses suddenly tipped over and died. No,” she said wistfully, “peaceful days are over. The Line, more specifically the Arsenal Engine, is coming for us.”

Creedmoor raised an eyebrow at her. “They’re going to run tracks through the town, is that it? Don’t get me wrong, Mayor, but most people this far out west would rejoice to have some semblance of civilization brought back to them – even if it comes at the cost the Line demands.”

“I don’t. We – that is, the people of Ordinary – don’t. We all of us came here because we wanted peace,” she snapped, “Why else do you think we named our settlement ‘Ordinary’? Nothing of interest happens here, Mr Connolly, and we would like nothing of interest to _continue_ happening here.”

Now he did laugh. “And you want me to, what--? Throw myself at the entirety of the Linesmen coming your way? Wrestle an Engine straight out of its tracks? Mayor, that ain’t happening.”

“And why not? Because you can’t? Or because you won’t?” She let her words hang between them for a beat before pressing on, “The plan to take out the Arsenal Engine is already in place. We just need someone of your . . . caliber, I suppose, to help us carry it out.”

\--She’s ambitious! I like her.

\--She is foolish, Creedmoor, like so many of your kind. You were foolish once, too, but we cured you of that.

\--Did you?

Marmion did not answer, and Creedmoor supposed that was for the best.

“Will you help us fight off the Line here in Ordinary, Mr Connolly?” Mayor Balmoral was leaning across the table now, one hand reaching out entreatingly before she caught herself and withdrew back into her chair.

The two of them sat there in complete silence for a moment, seizing each other up. Then the mayor shook her head, breaking eye contact. It felt nothing like the victory Creedmoor thought it would, and the wrongness of it was driven home when she said, “Let me phrase it differently, then. Are you a coward, John, or are you an Agent of the Gun?”

Creedmoor cocked his head and slowly bared his teeth at her in a barely-passing imitation of a smile.

 

 

_II: Mayor Balmoral’s Plan  
_

Three days Creedmoor spent at Mayor Balmoral’s house, and for those three days he got even less sleep than when he’d actively been on the run from the Line. It wasn’t that the he needed to sleep – Marmion took care of that, albeit grudgingly, as it did with so many other things – but by the time the evening of the third day rolled around, Creedmoor was nevertheless beyond exhausted.

“Let’s call it a day, mayor,” he shouted at Eleanore Balmoral just as she let loose another shot from the rifle that was currently perched on her shoulder.

It hit the bottle target with a resounding crash of glass, and Creedmoor couldn’t help a satisfied smile. Two days ago she’d had trouble simply loading and shouldering the weapon, but as he watched she reloaded with admirable ease.

Only when the safety was flipped back on did she set down the gun and turn to him, and he had to smile at that, too. An Agent’s demon-ridden weapon had no safety measures whatsoever. “It’s not even nightfall yet, John.”

“It’s getting there.”

Eleanore Balmoral huffed at that, but she did so while already gathering up her things, and before long the two of them were trudging through the waist-high, sun-bleached grass back to Ordinary.

* * *

After it had become immediately obvious to Creedmoor that while Mayor Balmoral may have been a good enough tactician her skills with firearms were glaringly lacking, he had taken her out to an empty field and given her a rifle. Marmion was unhappy, but that wasn't unusual; Mayor Balmoral rapidly showed improvements, which was welcome -- and Creedmoor, he got to stand out under the open sky with grass swishing around his sides and a charming lady to keep him company, and he was happy.

Occasionally, for a few hours at a time, they were joined by other residents of the small town. Mostly young men and woman, eager to get a look at the Agent of the Gun who was going to save them – Creedmoor did his best to make an unimpressive picture, going so far as to deliberately miss a few of his shots while the townsfolk were watching him. Marmion did not like it – Marmion never liked anything – but it did as he asked.

Eleanore Balmoral, on the other hand, had confronted him about it after the first few times.

“I heard an Agent’s Gun never misses a shot,” she had begun.

“It doesn’t,” Creedmoor agreed with a nod and a shrug.

“Then why did you not hit the targets?”

“Because I didn’t want to. Those kids—“ he gestured vaguely in the general direction of the town, “they came to see an Agent of the Gun in action. Because they’d heard stories? Because they’re entertaining notions of becoming Agents themselves?” When Mayor Balmoral made to protest, he cut her off with a look. “That’s how it always starts, Mayor. I didn’t think you’d want any folk from Ordinary to run off and get themselves killed in pursuit of the Gun, so I missed on purpose.”

She considered his words. “Fair enough.” Then, after another beat of silence, “Thank you.”

And perhaps she had really been thankful and perhaps she hadn’t, but the truth of the matter was that their visitors had become less and less frequent until they stopped coming altogether.

* * *

“Two more days, John,” the mayor said just before they both went to their separate rooms inside the house. “Two more days. With you on our side, the plan will succeed.”

Creedmoor startled at that. “Of course it will.” And he quickly stepped inside his room and closed the door firmly behind himself.

\--It won’t, Creedmoor.

\--I know.

Time, as it so often tended to, was running out.

* * *

Mayor Balmoral had told him the details of her plan the first night Creedmoor spent at her house. The moon was already bright in the sky, casting its dull gleam down onto the sickly yellow grass and plains. The mayor had lit a candle in the kitchen of the house and invited Creedmoor to join her, and when he had he’d been greeted by a platter full of bread and cheeses and two glasses of some indefinable alcohol.

“If the circumstances were different, I’d suspect you were trying to get me into bed with you,” he teased her.

She gave a snort and gestured for him to sit down across from her. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate what you’re doing here, John; and I will admit that you have a certain rugged charm about you. But Ordinary comes first.”

Of course it did. Creedmoor sat down, grabbed a bit of cheese, and put on a wistful expression. “And here I thought you were warming up to me . . . “

\--Creedmoor.

“ . . . but alas. What’s all this, then?”

Mayor Balmoral picked up her glass and took a sip. “Things of great importance should only be discussed when you’re comfortable. So – here we are. Have a drink, Mr Connolly.”

He did. The two of them sat there for a bit, silence enveloping them. Inside Creedmoor’s head, even Marmion was quiet.

Once his glass was half empty, Creedmoor said, “Let’s be frank. What’s your plan for taking down the Arsenal Engine, mayor?”

She smiled. “Did you know, Mr Connolly, that Ordinary used to be a mining outpost?”

He did not, and told her so.

“It would have surprised me, had you known. The mine lasted for all of five years until the local Hill Folk took issue with the continued forays.  Faced with all-out war for a mine that was proving to be only marginally profitable, the previous mayor – my late brother – called a halt to the mining operation. Of course there were a great many people who did not agree with his decision and it eventually got him killed, but by that point most of the mining equipment had already been sold off and there was no profit to be made any longer.”

“My condolences,” said Creedmoor, because it was expected.

“Thank you. But to come to the point of this brief history lesson, Mr Connolly: not all of the mining equipment was sold. The dynamite, the explosives – it remains.” Eleanore Balmoral gestured down at the scratched wooden floorboards. “Right beneath this building, to be exact.”

Creedmoor was, for once, taken by surprise. “You plan to blow up the Arsenal Engine before it even fully gets here.”

“Exactly.”

* * *

The next morning Creedmoor had the mayor take him down into the basement to inspect the explosives, so as to better know what he was working with. The plan, Mayor Balmoral had elaborated, was for several select citizens of Ordinary to dig a huge cavern beneath where the Arsenal Engine’s tracks were supposed to run. They would load it up to the brim with explosives, and when the time came for the Engine to pass over the cavern, someone with very sharp reflexes – Creedmoor – would be there to blow off the remaining layer of rock and earth and the Arsenal Engine would plummet to its explosive death.

Eleanore Balmoral led him down a set of rickety stairs and through a dust-covered door, until at last the two of them found themselves in a large cellar. Creedmoor had never been particularly good with measurements, but he guessed that the hollowed-out room beneath the house was perhaps even bigger than the house’s ground floor – and, once his eyes had fully adjusted to the light, he saw that the whole cellar was stacked from floor to ceiling with wooden crates.

Each crate, the mayor told him, was packing enough firepower to blow up her house twice over.

There were a lot of crates.

“We’ll destroy the Arsenal Engine and all the Linesmen stupid enough to come with it,” said Eleanore Balmoral as she sat stood there, still in her nightgown, “we’ll destroy them all so thoroughly that the Line will never want to touch Ordinary again.”

\--Not only foolish, Creedmoor, but delusional as well. The banishment of one Engine only calls down the wrath of the others and when they punish, they do so with impunity.

\--You’re a lot alike in that regard, aren’t you?

\--Do not mock us, Creedmoor.

\--I’m not.

\--Shut up. Either way this town will not survive its battle against the Engines, and if you stay here you will go down with it.

There was a pause, and between blinks Creedmoor swore he could see the smoke-filled depths of the Lodge pan out in front of him, deep shadows superimposing themselves over the form of Mayor Balmoral.

\--We will not let you die here, Creedmoor.

“I’ll see what I can do to help,” Creedmoor told the mayor, to spite Marmion if nothing else.

He flinched at the retaliatory sharp pain in his head, but Eleanore Balmoral’s surprised smile at his support was well worth it, he figured.

 

_III: The Fall of a 600-ton Angel_

In the end, of course, Creedmoor did not succeed in bringing down the Arsenal Engine. The reasons for this were varied: This far out on the edge of the world it was difficult to find any kind of proper supplies, even for an Agent of the Gun as good at improvising as Creedmoor. The land was entirely too empty, and if Creedmoor were to ambush the Engine and its army as it made its way toward Ordinary, he’d be virtually coverless.

But, mostly, he didn’t even try. There were a fair number of Agents of the Gun who had taken out an Engine and won enough glory with it to immortalize their names forever. Creedmoor had to admit that the temptation to do just that was great, but in the end, he knew that he was a coward. He had neither enough skill nor sufficient support to take down an Engine, and besides – Marmion kept nagging in his mind, telling Creedmoor that the Spirits of the Gun were hard-pressed for Agents, that they could not afford to lose one of them in such a hare-brained attempt at heroism, that Ordinary was incredibly unimportant in the larger scheme of things and its townfolk insignificant.

Eventually Marmion had threatened to put the Goad on him. The last nail in the coffin, that – Creedmoor was fond of the town and its people, and he was fond of Mayor Balmoral, too, but he would not face the Goad for them.

What Creedmoor did, then, was this:

The evening before he was supposed to take on the army of the Arsenal Engine, he packed his things. There weren’t many belongings to stuff into his pack; it didn’t do for an Agent of the Gun to get too attached to anything save for their demon-ridden weapons. In the beginning of their service most Agents tended to nevertheless keep a suitcase of mementos, but inescapably time and the relentless pursuit of the Line liberated them from that particular delusion.

Meagre possessions all packed up, he went back downstairs and had dinner with Mayor Balmoral. It was a light meal, all vegetables, but she had made a rice-like desert and he thought that to be fitting for their last meal together. Afterwards, they each had a glass of wine, and when the night outside could no longer get any darker Creedmoor excused himself and went to bed.

A few hours past midnight, Marmion woke him up with the scent of blood and gunpowder and a fierce – if brief – ache in his head.

Creedmoor got up, still dressed, gathered up his pack and went on his way. He briefly played with the thought of making the explosives stashed in the basement beneath the house unusable, but his master urged him on and for once Creedmoor felt inclined to follow Marmion’s instructions.

He left the house by the front door, because it was the one door in the entire building that did not creak when you so much as looked at it.

In the garden – rough patches of bone-dry grass and dust – he paused for a moment to look up at the stars. This far out West they still looked new; bright little pinpricks of light scattered all across the night sky.

\--I don’t like running, my friend.

\--Then you should not have stayed in the first place, Creedmoor, as we told you.

Creedmoor shook his head.

\--Still feels like a defeat, doesn’t it.

Marmion remained silent.

With another shake of his head, Creedmoor set out once more.

But, of course:

“Mr Connolly,” he heard Eleanore Balmoral call from out of the darkness.

Slowly, Creedmoor turned around to where he knew she was standing in the doorway.

The first thing he noticed was that she was not armed; the second, that she was still dressed in the rough linen breeches she’d been wearing all day. He winced at the sight. Had he been that obvious in his intentions?

\--You could never hide things from us, Creedmoor, which is as it should be; but you let your guard down around the woman. Sloppy.

He made to greet the mayor but thought better of it when he caught the look in her eyes, instead only raising a hand to his head in a lazy salute.

Eleanore Balmoral didn’t say anything, only watched him with those icy eyes. Finally she mouthed something at him, then turned around and went back inside. Creedmoor could track her movement through the house by the lights blinking on and back out again; when she had arrived at her bedroom he too turned away.

_You coward. We’ll do it without you._

Creedmoor ran until his legs threatened to give out, and accompanied by the smell of gunpowder and ash Marmion reached in and gave him more strength, and Creedmoor ran farther still.

 

_IV: in another town, called…_

Three weeks later the newspapers were filled with the usual drivel. On the front page a man called Harry Ransom was inviting all to come to him and witness the first showing of his amazing invention which would, in the man’s own words, revolutionize the way of life out in the West; half a page further down the editor of Jasper City’s first and so far only newspaper bemoaned the Line’s lack of ingenuity when it came to mechanizing the world for the common folk’s betterment. The back page of the local papers tended to keep a short list of the week’s dead. This time was no different although Creedmoor noted that the list was longer than usual. It had been a particularly hot and dry week, however, and most of the dead seemed have been on the old and wizened side of things.

In between the lament and celebration of life and declarations of death were scattered a handful of reader’s columns, articles, and further advertisements that Creedmoor flipped through with glazed eyes.

When word finally came of the annexation of Ordinary, it was on the dusty heels of a farmer’s boy who’d come to peddle his family’s wares out in the city.

“Ordinary? Oh mister, it’s gone, all of it! A real awful accident I hear.” The kid continued prattling on but Creedmoor wasn’t listening anymore. Gone. Of course it was, the armies of the Engines did not do things by half-measures.

It was only when he heard the mayor’s name pass the kid’s lips that he glanced down at him again. Something in his eyes must’ve betrayed his mood because the kid shut right up, looking at him with something very much akin to fear. Creedmoor didn’t care. “The mayor—Mayor Balmoral—what happened to her? Do you know?”

The kid stared at him open-mouthed for a moment longer. Creedmoor wasn’t sure he’d heard him and was about to ask again, when, “No, sir. They say the mayor was the one who set off the bombs y’see, she waited for the delegation from the Line to come to her house and then she blew ‘em all up. I don’t think you’d survive something like that unless you were an Agent of the Gun or the like, but there ain’t any reason to believe she was one of ‘em.”

“I see,” said Creedmoor, and while Marmion laughed derisively in his head he made a beeline for the nearest bar.

As the empty glasses began to pile up in front of him, and as the world grew increasingly blurry at the edges, Eleanore Balmoral’s voice echoed through his head in a continuous loop:

_Are you a coward, John, or are you an Agent of the Gun?_

What a ridiculous question. As if the two were mutually exclusive.


End file.
